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Milk of Almond Ice
Take one-half pound of almonds. Remove the shells and skins, and put them into a large receptacle of cold water. Add three bitter almonds to the number. Remove them from the water, and pound them up in a bowl, adding from time to time a little water. Then add more water and put them into a cheese-cloth and wring it, to extract all the juices you can. Then pound them some more, adding water, and squeeze out as before. To the milk you have extracted from the almonds add four tablespoons of powdered sugar and one-half tablespoon of orange water; put into the freezer and freeze.
If desired, you can put half the quantity of almonds and the other half of cantaloup seeds, pound together, and proceed in the same manner. This combination is refreshing and delicious.
This is a raw, unheated almond milk frozen as a water ice, and it depends on bitter almonds for its flavour. That single ingredient is why the recipe belongs on the shelf rather than in the freezer.
- The bitter almonds are the problemBitter almonds contain amygdalin, which the nut's own enzyme converts to hydrogen cyanide when the kernels are crushed and wetted — exactly what this method does, repeatedly, in cold water. Nothing in the recipe applies heat or any other step that would drive off or destroy the resulting cyanide.
- No safe margin in three kernelsBitter almond kernels vary widely in amygdalin content, so the dose in any given three is unknown, and it cannot be measured in a home kitchen. Three kernels are dispersed through a whole batch and much of the solids are wrung out in the cheesecloth, so the actual exposure is small; the objection is that it is unquantifiable rather than that a fixed toxic dose is established.
- You will not find them anywayRaw bitter almonds are not sold for eating in the United States and are restricted in many other countries. What is sold as "bitter almond" flavouring is benzaldehyde-based extract, which carries the aroma without the glycoside — but that is a different product, not a swap the recipe anticipates.
- Cantaloupe seedsThe variant substitutes melon seeds for half the almonds. Melon and related seeds were long used in pounded emulsions and cooling drinks, so the idea is not the author's invention. It does not change the bitter-almond issue in the main formula.
- Orange waterOrange flower water, distilled from bitter orange blossom, still sold by Middle Eastern grocers and baking suppliers. Half a tablespoon is a lot by modern standards.
- "Put into the freezer"In a book of this period the freezer is a hand-cranked ice cream churn packed with ice and salt, not a cabinet. With no dairy, egg or stabiliser, the mixture sets as a coarse granita unless it is churned or scraped.
- If you want the dishSicilian almond milk ices are still made and widely documented. Use a current recipe from a reliable source rather than adapting this one.
Latte di mandorla — almond milk — is a long-established preparation in Italian cooking, and Sicily is often said to have been its centre since the medieval period, when Arab agriculture established sugar cane and citrus on the island alongside almonds already grown there. Before refrigeration and reliable dairy in hot months, pounded almond milk served as a keeping liquid for fast days and Lenten cookery, and it survives in the bar drink latte di mandorla and in orzata syrup. The three bitter almonds appear to have been a common trick for flavour: sweet almonds alone taste of very little, and a few bitter kernels supply the marzipan note now got from extract. Cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries call for them without comment, and the shift away from them is generally traced to a mix of factors, including the gradual understanding of cyanogenic glycosides as well as regulation and supply, rather than any change in taste.